Food Wasted In America Can End Extreme Poverty Globally

May 23, 2015 1:35 pm

We had spotted some stats around the amount of food wasted in America:

“Americans throw away nearly half their food every year, waste worth roughly $165 billion annually, according to a study released on Tuesday.
“As a country, we’re essentially tossing every other piece of food that crosses our path. That’s money and precious resources down the drain,” said Dana Gunders, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s food and agriculture program.

The NRDC report said Americans discard 40 per cent of the food supply every year, and the average American family of four ends up throwing away an equivalent of up to $2,275 annually in food.
Just a 15 percent reduction in losses in the US food supply would save enough to feed 25 million Americans annually. It also would lighten the burden on landfills, where food waste makes up the largest component of solid waste, according to the NRDC, a nonprofit environmental organization.”

“In his book, The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs made some careful estimates as to what it would cost to end extreme poverty in the world in about twenty years.
..

To end extreme poverty worldwide in 20 years, Sachs calculated that the total cost per year would be about $175 billion. This represents less than one percent of the combined income of the richest countries in the world.”